One Day
by Roseille
Summary: One day, a child said his first word, and, since no one heard, he didn't say a thing, even as he died. /-/ Yoite


**O n e D a y**

**SPOILER ALERT: **_This is about as far as you want to read if you don't want any **spoilers** for Yoite's past and family._

**Disclaimer/Notes:** Nabari no Ou is too awesome for me to own. Its stunning amount of awesome does not prevent me from reading it, however, and adoring it every second of every hour of every **single day** in each week and month and year. Those who have read the manga may find this makes more sense in light of Yoite's manga backstory. We know almost nothing about his mother (or his father and two siblings, for that matter), but I wrote an emotion-fueled story from three points of view; first from his mother's, then his father's, and, finally, from the point of view of little 'Yoite'. I promise it will make more sense if you follow the manga, but then, it may not, considering that I filled this story with my own ideas. But what_ is_ fanfiction, anyway, if not that?

* * *

One day, a woman had a baby. She was a very small woman, and thin, with black hair like charcoal and blue eyes like the sky. One day, she had a baby, and the baby looked just like her. It was a strange feeling, having a life leave you when it had been a part of you for so many months. It felt empty. She felt empty. It was cold. She wondered why the sky was dancing with blurred checkers, but then she realized it was only the ceiling, and it was dancing because she was crying. She didn't know why, but had always secretly held a belief that a body was only built to hold so much happiness and sadness, and when it became too much, you had to let it flow out from your eyes or you would break.

She thought the doctors were saying something—loud and frantic—but she could not hear. In her world, there was only her child. "My baby," she whispered, but she could hardly hear her own words. (The doctors had not said, "It's a boy" or "it's a girl", but it didn't matter. This infant was her miracle and her very own lovely child, and nothing else mattered.) "My miracle. My Sora. Darling," she said. She wondered why her arms could not hold the tiny child. She tried to move her fingers, but the sandbags holding her down were so heavy, and she sank like an anchor into the bottom of the sea. Something was wrong. Something was wrong. It shouldn't be so dark. She could not see her baby's face.

Someone took her baby away, and even though she tried to reach for it, the only thing she could do was let out a strangled sigh and lift her fingers. _My darling, my darling, I'm sorry. It's too cold to stay here. It's all right if I sleep, isn't it?_

One day, a woman had a baby, and she died.

The machines translated the silence of death into a shrill metallic shriek that made the baby cry.

The doctor's arms weren't near so warm as its mother's had been.

**_o o o o o o o o_**

One day, a father came to the hospital to see his child. It wasn't a happy occasion. He had not been there for the birth, since he had just gotten off work to find his two children at home. They'd told him the news. He wondered why she hadn't called when she found out that she was about to have the child. The tall man stared through hard glass at the rows of infant beds. His eyes settled on the one marked Koudou.

There was a mess of night-black hair and blue eyes like shards of glass reflecting sky. He imagined that if he could bring himself to touch the small, silent child, it would be very warm. He had already touched his silent wife. Her skin had been lukewarm and clammy, no longer tender and pliant with life. All the happiness and the silly words that had filled up her small body to overflowing—the things that had made her so lovely—were gone. Her face was stiff and her fingers were hard to open in order to thread his own in between.

A long time ago, she had told him that his sadness got lost in translation because his body read it as anger.

One day, a father came to the hospital to see his newborn child, but his sadness got garbled and the letters got all mixed up and swapped and crushed, and all he felt when he looked at the silent, lonely infant was hatred.

The baby shivered and lifted little fingers just an inch.

He couldn't watch anymore. The man left, and wished that the baby had died so that his wife could have survived.

**_o o o o o o o o_**

One day, a child said his first word, and no one was there to hear it. Then he said his second, and his third, and many more, until he could speak almost as well as his older brother and sister could. He was six years old, and then he was seven and eight and nine. He didn't know what eyes looked like when they weren't looking at you with hatred.

_"Shinigami,"_ they said, and it was a word that crept up behind him at night and made him wish that there were warm arms to hold him. There weren't warm arms, though. He had killed them. He was a death god, and it was all his fault that a person as ugly as himself had lived when his mother was gone.

He used to have a picture of her, and she was smiling. When he was a bad, bad boy, he would do the very worst thing and imagine that this beautiful woman loved him.

His name was not Sora because he was not a girl. He was not loved, and there was something very wrong with him. He had killed his own mother. He deserved to be alone.

They came down into his little basement one day, and he had never seen them so angry. His brother's face was red and bloodless white; blue veins showed underneath the skin. His brother was so angry that he looked like he'd be sick at the fact that the little boy who shouldn't have existed had opened _his _boxes and touched _his _things. (But he had only read the books, he promised. He had only read the books, and he had been so very careful not to hurt them.) They found the picture the nameless boy kept of his mother. _"How dare you. As if she'd want to look at you."_

And he couldn't hate them, because his sister was crying tears of grief even when she held a knife.

It was his first time upstairs in a while.

Then there was blood, so much of it—hot and spurting with each beat of his heart.

He ran.

_One day, _

_a child said his first word, _

_and_

_since no one heard, _

_he didn't say a thing_

_even as he died._

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**Notes: **Errm... well. I'm just one great big ball of fluff and happiness, huh? ...Y-yeah... I thought so. I wrote this one night while thinking about chapter 50. Yoite's past makes me so sad. It's too bad that he only found people who really cared about him when he was doomed to die. GACK, it's all so depressing. I'm gonna go and hug a plushie or feed bunnies, now. Or maybe I'll curl up into a ball and sob a bit. Maybe a lot. Any thoughts would be adored beyond expression! I promise to try to write something at least vaguely happy next time! **P—please review?**


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